My SO's PI died of Glioblastoma a few years ago, completely derailing their career path, halting all research, and leaving behind a grieving and struggling family. It's difficult to picture how my life would be different had this treatment been available.
My dad died from that also, luckily for me, I was still in middle school and it had almost no impact on my career path. It's difficult to picture how my life would be different had this treatment been available.
My point is that text doesn't necessarily convey how they meant it. Their experience of the advisor's passing was indirect, so it isn't all that crazy that what stands out to them is how it affected their SO and the obvious effect it'd have had on the advisor's family.
That's because I'm me and not anyone else. It was pretty traumatic for my SO and everyone else around the PI. The PI insisted on going into work and continuing on like nothing changed even as they were mentally deteriorating. If I don't include details about the tragedy it might be because I don't want to bring that energy to my comment and not because I somehow was oblivious to their significance.
It’s still odd to characterize a person’s death in terms of someone else’s career progression. Probably because it’s uncommon to see a death characterized by it’s second order effects. Usually it’s the family or friends and it’s more personal. OP didn’t say anything wrong though.
> It’s still odd to characterize a person’s death in terms of someone else’s career progression.
OP even went another level, since it was their SO's career progression that was affected, thus affecting OP. Agreed, they're not wrong, but it was odd.
They’re not wrong in the sense they’re factually correct: OP’s life would have been different had a cure been available. But if OP’s SO approached her PI on their deathbed and said “Dear PI, what about my SO?” They’d probably be met with incredulity.
Not really, we humans put death of others generally way above career of others, even if closer.
There is this thing called emotional intelligence which branches into many things and situations, and can't be learned even though I've seen a lot of folks performing imitation very well, till something novel comes around and it all falls apart.
One can grieve for the loss of a persons life while grieve for the impact of that loss on your own. The person who died is literally dead and as such entirely insensate to such things. However the people who depended on them - their family, as they also noted, as well as people whose livelihood depended on them, are all also affected by their death in a profound way. The impact on their life cascades on indefinitely, perhaps even generationally. The person who died is surely missed - but when someone upon whom many people depend dies that dependency can cause grief well beyond the loss of a loved one or friend.
For these words, I assume they were talking about the PI's family. The rest I assume they were illustrating how these deaths affect far more people than just the families of the ones lost to cancer.
Deaths CAN be a great inconvenience, and nobody implied choice but you. It sucks when people die, and impacts can vary with connection.
It is more honest to the dead to honor and state your real loss. A dead human can be both a loved one and teacher to different people, depending on the connection. This person didn't lose a lover, they lost a teacher, and that matters too.
You don't even need to have liked someone to have lost something when they die
